Pulse Hail

[rdale]

Donavon and Jungbluth came up with some very handy numbers for pulse-storm hail events, using the freezing level and 50dbZ heights.

Article: http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175/WAF1008.1

Powerpoint: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/fgf/science/CaseStudy/SevereHail/Severe_Hail.ppt

I put those numbers into a clean page, which you can reduce as desired to fit around the desk. http://skywatch.org/Hail.pdf

Basically on a day with a given freezing level, look for the 50dbZ echo to get above the corresponding height and then worry about severe hail in a pulse storm.

If you have GR2AE, you can get the latest freezing level in the first column of the RUC sounding (Algorithms / Environment). If you go to Algorithms / Alg Settings, you can change the Echo Tops to 50 dbZ -- so the ET product would show you the height of the dbZ without having to mess around.

If you go that route, I've created a new color table which makes things a little easier to read.

;
; 50dbZ Echo Top Color Table
;
Units: KFT
Step: 5
Scale: 3.281
Color: 15 0 200 255 0 100 128
Color: 20 0 255 200 0 128 100
Color: 25 255 255 0 180 128 0
Color: 30 255 128 0 128 64 0
Color: 35 255 0 255 128 0 128
Color: 40 128 128 128 255 255 255
Color: 45 255 255 255

 

[mikedeason]

Thanks Rob. Excellent job on that. Do you happen to know if there has been any local area studies done that have successfully adapted this method to areas outside of the Plains and Midwest? I've looked around at some of the southern region NWS sites but haven't come up with anything yet. None the less I'm going to see how well it works in our neck of the woods as we'll certainly be transitioning into our summer time pulse season soon.

 

[rdale]

ABQ did some work - http://www.srh.noaa.gov/abq/research/P3R8_Version_Final.pdf